We extract large quantities of groundwater for irrigation in rural areas. And in urban areas, for household and industrial purposes. This has led to a situation where many parts of the country are considered to be in critical or over-exploited state (Central Ground Water Board, 2022). More than half the country’s groundwater levels are decreasing.
We already know the devastating impact of groundwater depletion on access to drinking water (and for irrigation). There are also reports of subsistence of ground in some locations. And now, we have a new study which estimates that groundwater extraction has led to a change in the location of the earth’s pole.
Groundwater extraction results in redistribution of water from underground reservoirs to surface run-off and atmosphere (through evaporation) and eventually to the oceans, causing sea level rise. Sea level rise is being cased by ice-melt and groundwater extraction. The shifting of large quantities of water has, to put it crudely, shifted the weight around the surface of the earth, and caused the rotational pole to shift.
The new study estimates that groundwater extraction is the second largest contributor to sea level rise. It estimates that groundwater extraction alone has shifted the earth’s pole by 78.48cm towards 64.16 East during 1993-2010. This is due to water redistribution from aquifers to the oceans.
(For a simple summary of the paper’s findings, see this article in Science.org)
This makes sense — water is heavy. And sea level rise shifts the weight and changes the location of the pole. Of course, as with all scientific claims, more studies will be needed to corroborate this claim and go into further details.
But what is fascinating (and sad) is that we humans are changing not only the composition of forests, seas, populations of other living beings, global temperatures and wind patterns on earth, but also the rotational axis of the earth itself.
Stirring the Pyramid 